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Archive for February, 2013

4 x 2k is one of the best and one of the worst sessions you can do. Mentally it is always challenging seeing 2000m on the monitor when you know you have to row it hard. Knowing there are still 3 more, then 2 more, then 1 more to go after this 2000m makes it especially mentally tough. But any session that is mentally tough it going to provide big training benefits.

A week ago I did the first of the Pete Plan longer rep sessions with the 5 x 1500m / 5min rest. For that session I targetted just under 1:45 pace with a fast last rep. Mental adaption is the biggest gain when you haven’t done hard interval training for some time, so despite being 8000m rather than 7500m total session distance, 3 rest periods rather than 4, and 33% longer reps, I decided to target the same pace for yesterday’s session.

You can’t help but feel good when you achieve your target on this session, even if it is some way below the best you have done on it before. You can only do what you can do on the day though, and work from there.

The only other session of note earlier this week was a first attempt at this month’s CTC challenge, a straight 30mins:

It felt like too far to go after 10mins to maintain the pace, but I didn’t want to risk not finishing the session so decided to slow right down. Feeling better physically the mentally after a 5min “break” I managed to slowly pull the pace back down, and finish not too far off the initial target.

Now I head off to the US for another week of work. Washington DC tomorrow, Maryland on Monday, back to DC, then onwards to Pennsylvania before heading home on Thursday. Will I see an erg in any of the hotel gyms?

On one of those days when you don’t feel like training it’s never fun doing one of those sessions you never really feel like doing. It is going to be one of those weeks with so much to do at work before I head off to Washington DC next week though, and the training does help to keep you sane.

So it was straight to the gym after the commute home from work, 2500m warm up, then into the session. Target today of all reps under 1:37.5.

Has it really been a month since I last blogged? To be fair, there hasn’t been much training to blog about since my last entry on 1st January. I continued doing steady 10k rows most days during my holiday in Seattle, arriving home on Friday 8th. I then had two days of mostly sleep before heading back to the US on a work trip, taking in the sights of Pensacola Beach in Florida, followed by Las Vegas. When I arrived back home again on Thursday 14th I had managed a total of 16km on the erg during the entire work trip, not enough to stop my fitness levels dropping somewhat.

So I have been back, and training, for two weeks now. I decided a week ago that what I really needed to do was get consistent interval training back into my routine in order to make progress, so my plan is to do (almost) standard Pete Plan interval sessions on a Sunday (speed reps) and a Friday afternoon (distance reps).